CrashTestChix

SANs or storage area networks, were a topic of discussion at this Lotusphere’s Gurupalooza.  See Paul Mooney’s post.

My comments included:

·         Educate yourself about SANs – you don’t have to be a hardware or a storage geek to learn the basics.  When you go into the next hardware meeting your eyes won’t glaze over when the SAN administrators start talking about controllers, and LUNs, etc., etc. 

·         Find out what Domino needs to run best on a SAN.  Here’s one IBM Technote 7002613.  The Storage Network Industry Association is a good source or contact your SAN vendor for advice.

·         Start keeping track of I/O statistics.  If you suspect that I/O is causing an issue with Dominoperformance begin recording statistics.  SAN architecture changes require planning, and can be expensive. Do your homework; have your statistics ready in order to justify your request.

You can run Domino on a SAN.  In our environment, we currently run everything, but the Notes data directory on our SAN.  This includes archive transaction logs.  So with careful planning and monitoring you can do this!